Capacity and resources for managing data about alien and invasive species (A&IS) is generally limited. But such limitations are even more prevalent among the Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs), making it imperative to promote collaboration between the diverse often fragmented network of organizations that hold such data.
This project on aims to:
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Mobilize and digitize A&IS data from PICT data holders
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Promote the use of established data standards in recording good quality data and related metadata
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Make these data available for decision making to all stakeholders
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Establish baseline checklists at different spatial resolutions
Inconsistent use of data standards has impeded the flow of A&IS data between national, regional and global repositories—despite the fact that Aichi Biodiversity Target 9 commits national governments to identify A&IS and prioritize them for management action. By promoting the use of established data standards, recording high-quality data and metadata, and making these data freely available for decision-making, this project seeks to establish a more seamless flow of data to users and stakeholders at every scale of society.
Project Progress
Consortium Partner countries have held their National Invasive Species Data Mobilization Meetings. Held in nine countries and territories across the Pacific, these meetings identified key data holders and datasets. Templates for data digitization have been provided and distributed to all of the project partners to assist with the process of data digitization.
Partners were invited to a workshop titled “Regional Alien and Invasive Species Data and Information Mobilisation and Capacity Building in the Pacific”, which was hosted by Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), in Apia, Samoa from the 16th to the 20th of April 2018. The workshop was attended by 27 participants from ten Pacific Island countries and territories (Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, The Kingdom of Tonga, Solomon Islands, Wallis and Futuna) with the primary objective to enhance the capacity of Consortium Partners planning and implementation of biodiversity data and digitization according to GBIF standards. Its focus was on the technical aspects of the data mobilisation including aspects related to the data lifecycle: digitisation, management and online publishing. The workshop also focused on the use of data to support decision making, data management and tools.
The workshop was designed to provide a platform where the participants could publish the datasets identified during their national meetings, using the technical expertise available. As a requirement of the workshop, participants had published at least one dataset using the GBIF portal by the end of the week. In total, 21 datasets from 10 countries across the Pacific were published. Agencies from seven countries were registered as new publishers on GBIF.
The project intends to develop and deliver a resource to assist data holders in the Pacific region to publishing invasive species data using GBIF. In turn, it is hoped that this resource will help to consolidate learning, maximizing the learning from the project. Printed versions of the resource will be distributed and made available online as part of the existing Pacific Invasive Species Battler series.
